Berklee College of Music’s campus in Valencia, Spain, once again partnered with Bizkaia International Music Experience (BIME), the leading music industry conference in Bilbao, Spain, at this year’s event from October 28-30, 2015. Celebrating its involvement, Emilien Moyon, Berklee’s director of the Master’s Program in Global Entertainment and Music Business, led a panel to discuss the concept of “the Artist as a Start-Up.”
“For years the music industry was ruled by one dominant business model, in which artists had to rely on a few central stakeholders to develop a career,” explained Moyon. “Today, the reality offers more opportunities to artists and we see a multiplicity of models that greatly change from one artist to another. That’s why every artist can be looked at as a start-up in order to define the right strategy to develop a business around them.”
Leading international professionals spanning the entire industry—from musician and promoter, to journalist and entrepreneur—participated in an interesting debate. The panel comprised Tommy Darker, director and founder of Darker Music Talks; French musician and producer Cindy Castillo; Benji Rogers, president and founder of the online, direct-to-fan music platform, PledgeMusic; and Paul Sonkameble of Warner Music Group, together with Berklee’s Emilien Moyon.
“Our panel at BIME demonstrated the increasing importance for artists to adopt an entrepreneurial spirit in order to develop their careers as ventures to enable them to succeed in the highly competitive and complex market of the music industry of today,” concluded Moyon.
Launched in September 2012, Berklee’s Global Entertainment and Music Business master’s program teaches the concepts and methods required to meet the artistic management and entrepreneurial challenges of the rapidly changing global music industry of today. Students go through the pertinent legal, financial, artistic, and ethical issues as they learn to navigate an industry with accelerated change. From crowdsourcing to music streaming, the way of doing business in the music industry is being revolutionized. Students of Berklee’s Global Entertainment and Music Business master’s program have a vested interest in both music and business. When they graduate, they are prepared, and given the competitive edge to not only participate in, but also to lead, the global music and entertainment industry of today.
The BIME event provides a meeting place for professionals from the music, video gaming, and technology industries to exchange and create new ideas. BIME also showcases some of the most important and relevant artists in music, making the festival one of the major festivals in Europe.